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KARACHI, Feb 27 (AFP) - Pakistan was considering Wednesday US requests to extradite Sheikh Omar, the British-born confessed mastermind of slain US reporter Daniel Pearl's abduction, as police kept up a search for his body.

"Pakistan has received a request for the extradition of Sheikh Omar from the United States. It is reviewing it and the response will follow," a Pakistani government spokesman told AFP Tuesday.

Washington stepped up the pressure for extradition Tuesday on Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who met with US Ambassador Wendy Chamberlin and spoke by telephone with Secretary of State Colin Powell.

"The United States will continue to make its case to Pakistan. Pakistan has received the case well," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.

However Fleischer cautioned against expecting an "instant resolution" to the situation.

No Pakistani official would say how Musharraf responded to the US request, but one noted that Islamabad had agreed to extradition in the past.

"Although there is no formal extradition treaty between the United States and Pakistan, there are two precedents when Pakistan extradited terrorists wanted by the United States," the official said.

Pakistan extradited to the US suspects in the 1993 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and outside the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters near Washington.

Omar admitted in court on February 14 he had masterminded the abduction of the Wall Street Journal correspondent who disappeared on January 23. He also said that the reporter was dead, which was confirmed a week later when a grisly video surfaced of Pearl's slaying.

Omar, who was born in 1973 in London, was Monday ordered remanded in police custody for another two weeks as police seek evidence.

"We have 14 more days to find the clue from the killers and to recover the remains of Pearl," a senior police investigator told AFP.

He also said investigators would examine the video of Pearl's slaying "very minutely".

Police are still searching for Pearl's remains and for seven fugitives described in court Monday, including Amjad Hussain Farooqi, who allegedly drove Pearl from a Karachi hotel on his way to meet a contact for his story.

An investigator said Farooqi had been an instructor at a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan but returned to Pakistan after the Taliban was ousted from power.

US officials have said they believe a treaty signed in 1931 by Washington and local authorities in what was then part of the British empire remains valid.

Islamabad has allowed US forces to take into custody an unknown number of Pakistanis from Afghanistan who were allegedly linked to the Taliban or al-Qaeda.

But the extradition of Omar could be more complicated, as Musharraf has acknowledged Pearl's abduction may be part of the backlash against his crackdown on Islamic extremists.

Musharraf vowed after Pearl's killing to "liquidate terrorists" from Pakistan.

Omar, whose full name is Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, was wanted by the United States even before Pearl's abduction over the kidnapping of an American in India in 1994.

Omar spent five years in an Indian jail for the kidnapping, in which three Britons were also snatched. He was released in December 1999 in exchange for passengers on a hijacked Indian Airlines plane. 

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